The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed the educational authorities to file a report to a public interest litigation petition that sought a State-wide directive for constitution of a special child-safety committee in all the educational institutions in Tamil Nadu.
A Division Bench of Justices C.V. Karthikeyan and R. Sakthivel was hearing a petition filed by C. Selvakumar of Madurai. The petitioner said the committee should comprise representatives from the district administration, police, child protection and parents to ensure effective monitoring and grievance redressal mechanism.
Referring to recent news reports regarding the arrest of a private higher secondary school teacher in Madurai on the charges of sexually harassing a girl student in 2025, the petitioner said the incident demonstrated the need to strengthen preventive child-safety in government, government-aided and private schools, and colleges.
He said there should be an effective preventive mechanism to ensure a safe and accessible method for students to report complaints, parents are informed, child-protection authorities and, wherever the law mandates, police, are promptly involved and no such matter is suppressed or treated merely as an internal disciplinary issue where a statutory offence is alleged.
The competent authorities should be directed to conduct periodic awareness and sensitisation programmes for students, parents, teachers, non-teaching staff and administrators to ensure children can complain without fear of intimidation, retaliation, public exposure or unnecessary repeated questioning and to audit whether adequate counselling and psychological support is available for children, he said. The court posted the matter for hearing to October 27.
Published – September 04, 2026 07:26 pm IST
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